


in this one, my roommate is a cat

by ohvictor



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, chikage is a tiny cat, itaru is a pathetic adult, itarus sister is mentioned?, no mankai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohvictor/pseuds/ohvictor
Summary: No MANKAI AU where Itaru is a lonely salaryman who takes a leap of faith and adopts a standoffish kitten named April.
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru & Utsuki Chikage
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	in this one, my roommate is a cat

**Author's Note:**

> hello....................... sorry to add another chikaita cat fic to the tag........ in this one, april the cat is just a cat with some resemblance to chikage, not a catboy or an au chikage or anything. aka, just pure self-indulgence. i work with kittens (or... i did when i began this fic in february, pre-lockdown), but can't adopt a cat due to my living situation. so, writing about itaru adopting one has been comforting for me. 
> 
> i'm presenting this as a standalone one-shot for now, but i do have plans for future chapters!
> 
> you don't need to know anything about chikage to understand this, but there is a direct reference to his backstory (uh... if you know, you'll see what i mean).

Itaru swears he did not go to the mall for anything other than food and to stare longingly at some new game releases. After he’s accomplished both of these, however, he finds himself standing outside the little adoption agency booth, nose pressed to the plexiglass windows as beautiful little puppies and kittens frolic in pens inside. In hindsight, this was his first mistake. 

Of course, his customary bad taste leads him to take particular notice of the one kitten who’s _not_ playing with the others. It’s smushed itself into a corner of the kitten pen, ratty tail curled tight against its surprisingly fluffy body, and is watching sullenly as the rest of the kittens prance around. Even the booth employees seem to be giving it a wide berth as they clean the animals’ crates and shuffle folders around. 

Itaru’s traitorous brain reminds him that his sister had told him to get a cat when he moved out. Something about making sure he isn’t too lonely. Itaru doesn’t think he’s lonely, but he’s never been a great judge of his own emotions. Including right now, since apparently he can’t take his eyes off the sullen kitten. It's dark-colored, an odd sort of mix of brown, black, and gray, and as if sensing Itaru’s eyes, it lifts big blue eyes to scan Itaru’s face. Even from here, Itaru can feel its charming lack of interest. 

It doesn’t hurt to ask how much the cat is, he decides, putting on his best adult smile as he pushes open the door to the booth. 

An employee immediately greets him, and most of the puppies and a few of the kittens take notice of the visitor and start crowding around the nearest edges of their pens, hungry for attention. The kitten in the corner doesn’t react except perhaps to shrink smaller into its corner. The employee starts chatting and Itaru thinks he’s being slick, fending off her eager questions. Maybe if he asks how much the kitten is right off the bat, he’ll balk at the price tag and forget this whole thing. 

“I'm glad you asked!” the employee chirps. “We actually have a special this month with the mall pet store! They have a beginner cat owner supply set, and if you purchase it and bring the receipt here, the kitten’s adoption fee will be halved!” 

Itaru hates this answer. “Great,” he says. Well, he’s come this far; he shouldn’t leave without at least saying hi to the little brat. “That kitten over there,” he points, “can you tell me about it?”

The employee looks surprised — yeah, Itaru deserves that — before she recovers her polite smile. “The dark-colored one? That’s little _April_ , in English. He’s a bit of a special case, actually. If you like sob stories, April’s your cat.” The employee watches Itaru’s face carefully as she continues. “He’s just seven months old, and he was adopted previously through our agency, but his owner actually passed away. We accepted him back, but he’s still adjusting to being back out in public. I guess he feels all alone in the world, right now.”

Itaru has no idea if sob stories work on him or not. All he knows is he can see April better now, and he has little light markings around his blue eyes, almost like round glasses. He looks scholarly, like an old soul. 

“Can I hold him?” Itaru asks, his mouth betraying him. 

“Sure,” the employee says. She pulls up a chair for Itaru to sit, “Just in case he jumps away,” she assures him, and doles out a pump of hand sanitizer into his palm. Then she goes to grab April, which proves to be easier said than done. As soon as the employee gets within a few feet of him, April runs to the other side of the pen, scattering a few of the other kittens in his way. Itaru expects April to hiss or swipe at them the way he’s seen cats on the street do, but the other kittens don’t seem to mind April’s agitation, and go back to their business once he passes. The employee gives Itaru an apologetic look and tries again, with no success. On her third try she manages to snag April by the back legs and drag him across the floor towards her, apologizing under her breath, but April squirms so hard that the employee drops him before she can hand him off to Itaru. 

“I'm so sorry,” she apologizes again, wringing her hands. “He really is a sweet cat from what I hear. He’s just not used to being here...” 

Itaru looks across the kitten pen at April, who’s giving him an expression Itaru can only interpret as a scowl. He looks at April’s ratty little tail and oddly dignified eye markings, his paws that are comically too large for him. He wonders what April will look like when he grows into them. If his tail will fill out and fluff up.

“I'm interested,” he says, before he can think better of it. 

—

Over the next few days, Itaru’s world tilts slowly but surely on its axis. 

He fills out the preliminary paperwork for April, guided by the employee. She seems frankly shocked that April is getting adopted before any of the friendlier kittens, although she’s too polite to say so outright, or to question Itaru’s bad taste. Itaru learns that April got his name because he was born in April, same as Itaru. His previous owner (RIP) was apparently a foreigner, and April had a brother, a little white kitten that he’d lived with at his previous home. The adoption agency doesn’t know what happened to him, and Itaru’s brain immediately starts spinning stories about undergoing a dramatic journey to reunite April with his long-lost brother before he reins himself in. The employee, oblivious to Itaru’s fantasies, tells him that the agency should be in touch to schedule a virtual home visit within the next day or two. 

After he waves goodbye to April (who ignores him), he walks across the mall aisle to the pet store, where a handsome employee talks him through the beginner kit he’s apparently buying. There’s a cat carrier, wet and dry food, a litter box with bagged litter and a scoop, bowls for food and water, a couple of starter toys and beds, a cardboard object for scratching, and more, all stuffed into a cardboard box and a few plastic shopping bags, which Itaru and the employee load into a shopping cart. Itaru signs up for a rewards account with the store on impulse, figuring if he’s adopting a cat he might as well start racking up freebies. He expects the pet store employee to ask which kitten he’s interested in, but the guy doesn’t ask, just signs off on his receipt, recommends him a few local vets, and wishes Itaru well with his new cat. 

Itaru loads up his car with all the cat supplies, drives home, and uses up all his energy lugging the box and bags up to his apartment. He won’t pick April up for another few days at least from what the employee was saying, so all his motivation to set the place up for a cat dissipates as he stares at the box and bags crowding near his front door. Therefore, he heats up a frozen dinner and games the rest of the night. 

The next day he gets a call while he’s at work, and checks his voicemail an hour later to find a message about setting up a virtual home visit. The agency will video call him to take a look around his place and chat with him, probably just to make sure he’s not a freak. Itaru contemplates trying to neaten up his place and then decides that if his lifestyle isn’t fit for a cat, it’s better to know now rather than later, and so he does nothing. The adoption coordinator who video calls him that night doesn’t seem to care about Itaru’s slovenly apartment; the whole call goes pretty smoothly, just a few easy questions and then a promise to be in touch soon. Itaru continues to not unpack the new cat supplies, but he does move the cat carrier back into his car. 

He lays in bed that night wondering what the fuck he’s doing. If he’ll regret adopting April. If he even deserves to have a cat, considering he can’t even get himself to set his apartment up. The cat care experts seem to think he’s fine, though, which is reassuring. 

It strikes him the next day how attached he is to April already. April’s only been in his life for a few _days_ , and Itaru’s still only met him the one time. And yet he’s actually excited to have a cat, to the extent that he finds himself checking his phone constantly through the workday for missed calls, and imagining April’s reactions to various treats and actions Itaru could offer him. Once April warms up to him, of course. That’s the key, isn’t it, because Itaru sure did zero in on the least sociable kitten in the room. He’s tenacious when he wants to be, though. If he has to spend a while grinding April’s affection stats, he’ll do it. 

That certainty reassures him more than nearly any other part of this process.

Two days later, he receives a call during his break letting him know that he can pick April up from the mall booth whenever he’s ready. Itaru talks himself out of ditching work early, slogs through the rest of the day, and then drives immediately to the mall. 

— 

It’s weird to step back into the booth knowing that he’s actually going to leave it with a kitten. It’s also weird to see April again, and the same employee Itaru spoke with the first day, both of them unchanged. Itaru wonders if April knows Itaru’s coming to adopt him. He waves at April as he passes him, and gets ignored again. Well, that’s what he expected.

There’s more paperwork to do, a contract to go over and a check to sign (half the usual price, as promised, with the pet store receipt; Itaru stuck it in the cat carrier so he’d remember to bring it). At the end, when Itaru’s signed all the forms, the employee gives Itaru a list of local vet clinics and other helpful numbers, as well as a sheet of info for first-time cat owners, and another employee helps her wrestle April into the carrier Itaru brought. April accepts this with only slightly less squirming than he had reacted to the employee trying to pick him up the first day. Once he’s latched inside, he hunches at the back of the carrier, his little blue eyes glaring back when Itaru peers through the mesh door at him. Itaru tucks the carrier, now humming with angry energy, under his arm with an air of finality. The employees wish him well as if he’s embarking on a daunting adventure. He kind of is, actually. 

With this quest completed (but the journey only begun!), Itaru takes the elevator down to where his car is parked in the mall garage, sets April’s carrier in his passenger seat, and buckles it in for good measure. After he climbs into his seat and turns the car on, he stares into the carrier, contemplating what the fuck he’s just done. 

April looks back up at him, his blue eyes round and calm, his little chin resting on his little paws. 

“You’re not all alone in the world,” Itaru tells him. It feels stupid to say out loud, even in the privacy of his own car. “You have me now.”

The next time he gets a look at April, after he drives out of the mall garage and merges onto the highway that will take them home, April is fast asleep, his little back rising and falling evenly as he breathes. 

—

Itaru enters his apartment twenty minutes later, an idiot with a kitten in a carrier who didn’t bother to kitten-proof his apartment until he actually brought the kitten home. 

It’s not like he can procrastinate on this _now_ , because as soon as he lets himself into the apartment and sets April down, April starts meowing to be let out, and Itaru panics. The only thing he can think to do is release April into someplace he’ll be contained, so Itaru puts the carrier in his bathroom, unfastens the little door, and locks the whole thing inside. April stops meowing then, or at least, Itaru can no longer hear him. 

It’s not a long-term solution by any means, so Itaru gets to work. He spends an hour following the first time cat owner sheet, more or less, which is to say he shoves all his gaming cords into a box off the floor, puts away as many controllers as he can find, and cleans up all the food trash on the floor. This is exhausting, and it’s just the bare minimum to make the place safe for a cat; he still has to make it _livable_. He debates the best locations for the food and litter and then remembers he can move it around later if necessary, so he sets up the food and water dishes in the kitchen, and stacks the boxes of cat food in a section of the cupboard. Seeing the boxes of April’s food next to Itaru’s own feels good. 

The litter box can go in Itaru’s bathroom, since Itaru can’t think of anywhere else to put it. That means he has to let April out, which he really should, considering April’s been cooped up in there for like an hour and a half. Itaru hovers anxiously by the bathroom door, but he hears nothing. 

This scares him enough to open the door, but as soon as the doorway opens more than an inch, April immediately shoots out of the room, startling Itaru so badly that he drops the full litter box he was carrying, spilling litter all over the floor. Whether or not the crash scares April is unclear, because by the time Itaru looks around, April’s disappeared off somewhere in the apartment. 

Itaru swears under his breath. He lets himself feel shitty for a few minutes, his heartbeat calming down, and then makes himself sweep up the litter. He scoops it back into the box — why not? it’s all clean — and sets the litter box up in the bathroom, by the door for easy access. 

He can’t think of anything else to do now, so he tries to find April, which takes about twenty minutes of Itaru straining various muscles to peer into increasingly small gaps between furniture. Eventually he looks between two boxes in his living room closet and sees round blue eyes glaring back at him, and groans in relief so loudly that the eyes immediately disappear as April shrinks back into the space. 

Itaru shakes treats in front of the boxes. He scoops out some wet food and sets it in front of the closet, and even retreats several feet. He tries going into his bedroom and listening as hard as he can through the door. When he gives up and checks the closet again, April's steady gaze greets him from behind the boxes. 

Well, he knows where April is, and April has food and water and a place to shit. Itaru knowingly adopted a cat who tried to hide in plain sight even in the store. There’s nothing else Itaru can think to do.

He spends the rest of the night gaming in the living room, and when he goes to bed, April has almost retreated to the corner of his mind. 

—

Over the next week, Itaru doesn’t really get used to having a cat. This is because he doesn’t actually see any cat in his apartment. 

There are indications that April is alive and healthy, of course, enough that Itaru doesn’t fear the worst. Itaru wakes up each morning to find politely hidden clumps in the litter box, and when he leaves food and water out before going to work, he returns to find it mostly consumed. However, he doesn’t actually see April himself. The morning after he adopts April, Itaru checks the spot in the living room closet and finds it empty; even shifting the boxes around to get a better view does not reveal a kitten. At that point Itaru’s going to be late for work, so he doesn’t search the apartment again. When he comes home, he finds April's eaten his food and used the litter box, and frankly, that’s enough to assuage most of Itaru’s worries. 

...besides, Itaru’s ranking in two different games right now, and if April doesn’t want to interact with Itaru yet, Itaru can fill his time with other things. 

So it’s weird, having a cat and also not having a cat. It feels a bit like a game, like setting out April’s food and scooping his litter is just dailies, except there’s no payoff, because he doesn’t even _see_ April. He can’t take pics of April and share them with people, which seems to be part of the fun of having a cat according to his coworkers’ Inste pages. Itaru hasn’t even told anyone he adopted a kitten. Not his coworkers, because he doesn’t want them to know about his life, and not his sister, because he doesn’t want her to try and come over to meet April (good luck with that, ha). Not online either, because of the lack of cute cat pics. And that’s about it as far as Itaru’s social circles. If he’d adopted a dog he’d maybe meet people by taking it on walks, but a dog would be too much energy, and walks too much exercise. 

Once the events he’s ranking in end and Itaru has time to be worried, he calls one of the vets the agency recommended. The vet seems amused when Itaru tells her that he adopted a cat who clearly wanted nothing to do with anyone, but she assures Itaru that April is fine. “Hiding is pretty normal for cats who are adjusting,” she says, her tone matter-of-fact enough that Itaru trusts her instinctively. “Sounds like you’re already doing all the right things. Let him get used to you and feel safe, and he’ll start coming out on his own.”

Itaru wants to ask how long that would take, but doesn’t want to sound whiny, so he thanks the vet and hangs up. Then he does what he probably should have done first, and goes online, where he finds dozens of articles about new cats hiding. Armed with the collective wisdom of the internet that this is (probably) not Itaru’s fault, nor something he can control, he resolves to try to stop stressing about April, and let April do his thing. 

He’s maybe come to care for April more than he thought, he realizes, now forcing his breathing back to normal after half an hour of stressed Googling. And this is with barely any interaction with April. If they ever forge any kind of relationship, there’s no telling how fond Itaru will get of the little bastard.

The websites Itaru found suggested ways of helping cats feel safe, like talking to them, offering them items with your scent, getting them to associate you with positives like food or treats, and keeping a routine that the cat can get used to. Itaru’s life is pretty boring, and he’s the only one feeding April, so he’s doing a lot of that already. He also talks on mic while gaming, and he talks to himself sometimes even when he’s AFK. So really, he’s already doing a lot of the stuff he’s supposed to. 

But he tries some more things. He leaves treats out for April in increasingly open areas of the apartment, talks to himself unabashedly through the evenings, and leaves one of his shirts next to April’s food bowls one day while he’s at work. None of this seems to invite any new behaviors; April ignores the treats and doesn’t respond to the talking, and if he interacts with Itaru’s shirt at all, Itaru can’t tell. He imagines April rubbing his tiny face on it and gets a little emotional, but there’s no cat hairs on the shirt to confirm or deny any sort of fantasies Itaru has.

Clearly, there’s nothing he can do except let April adjust at his own pace.

—

Itaru dreams one night of cuddling April.

He knows it’s a dream because April isn’t hiding. April has been guest starring in Itaru’s dreams for a while, often in nightmare scenarios where he’s hurt and Itaru can’t get to him, or where he prances through Itaru’s apartment, apparently fully adjusted, until Itaru calls out to him and he disappears into a crack in the wall. In this dream, though, April walks right up to the couch where Itaru’s laying, hops up onto Itaru’s chest, and curls up there, tucking his tail underneath him. 

The small weight of him warms Itaru’s chest. Itaru reaches out to pet April, runs his fingers carefully from the top of his head down his spine to the base of his tail, and April purrs, the vibrations echoing through Itaru’s body. He’s so warm, Itaru wonders how a dream could perfectly replicate a real cat. He wonders if April is this warm in real life.

The warmth is growing uncomfortable, like the feeling of needing to kick a blanket off of your legs. As Itaru realizes this, the dream dissolves around him, giving way to the inky darkness of Itaru’s bedroom. The warmth on Itaru’s chest anchors him as he slides from sleep to consciousness, and he blinks in the sudden dark of his real-life bedroom, his eyes adjusting.

Sitting on Itaru’s chest, visible only in silhouette, is April, his fuzzy back rising and falling as he breathes, his tail curled tight around himself. His blue eyes are open wide as he meets Itaru’s suddenly alert gaze. 

Neither of them move. 

Itaru thinks stupidly that if he just stays frozen, April won’t move either, even as he can feel his own breathing growing faster as his body wakes up. And then he gets hopeful that April finally trusts him, and moves one of his arms, hoping to dig it out of the covers and pet April head to tail like he had in the dream.

April startles, and he flees from Itaru’s chest in a whirlwind of claws that makes Itaru yelp. The sudden loud sound probably scares April worse; it scares Itaru too, kicks his heartbeat into panic mode, as he hears something thunk in the living room where April must have run off. 

Itaru pulls his arms free of the blankets and scrubs his hands over his face, the full weight of his frustration washing over him, defenseless in his half-awake state. He wants, so badly it startles him, to have a relationship with April, like _any_ relationship at _all_ , and he feels powerless to get there. Even now, now that he has _proof_ that April is curious about him and might approach Itaru of his own accord, Itaru scared him out of the room, and that might have set them back to where they were that first day. 

He wants to cry. But according to the clock across his room, he has to wake up for work in three hours. He could cry himself to sleep, but he hasn’t done that since high school, and that’s not a record he particularly wants to break. The pain from April’s claws when he launched himself off Itaru’s chest still smarts, but Itaru doesn’t think it broke the skin, or even that it tore his sheets. 

... The spot on his chest where April was curled up when Itaru opened his eyes is still warm. 

— 

Itaru doesn’t see April again for a few days. He tries really hard not to think about it, and mostly succeeds, thanks to another ranking event paired with a gacha he has to try really hard not to whale in. Partly because he’s a father now and he has to be responsible with his money, and partly because there’s supposed to be Kniroun X news at the End Links direct next week, and if they spring something on him, he needs to be ready to spend on that instead. 

If April takes another secret nap on Itaru’s chest, he’s not aware of it. If April feels _any_ more comfortable around Itaru in general, Itaru is not aware of it. He cycles between heartbroken worry and dull apathy depending on the hour, searches for information on anxious cats in his spare time, and contemplates buying all sorts of expensive cat treats before remembering his many other plans for his money. 

The event he’s ranking in picks up in the last few days, and Itaru ends up having to buy more gems than he expected to keep up during the final rush. He manages to keep his place (of course; taruchi would never fall out of last minute) but consumes so much caffeine to do it that he doesn’t get to sleep that night until nearly five in the morning, a mere two hours before he has to wake up for work. 

And then he doesn’t wake up for work. As he was dozing off, his body finally merciful, he imagined with dread the blistering wail of his alarm that would rouse him soon. Instead, he wakes up to pain in his cheek. 

“What the hell,” he mutters. His eyes feel plasticky and stiff as he pries them open. The world slides into focus slowly, and then very quickly when another blow lands on his face. 

April is sitting on Itaru’s pillow beside his head, paw raised to give Itaru another firm swipe. Itaru squeaks and twists out of the way, his hands flying up to shield his face from further attacks. April springs off the pillow when Itaru’s hands enter the field, and he maintains a wary distance from the bedroom doorway as Itaru groans his way out of bed. 

His clock reads 7:38. Later than he wanted to get up, but definitely manageable. He stumbles into the kitchen to find April’s food and water bowls empty, and a moment later April himself wanders in and sits primly next to them, looking up at Itaru with his big blue eyes. 

“Okay, I get it,” Itaru sighs. He dumps the used bowls in the sink and fills new ones. By the time he sets them down, though, April has disappeared again. 

“You couldn’t stick around?” he asks the empty room. There’s no response, which Itaru expected; April is very adept already at ignoring him. He rubs at his cheek, massaging the spot where April had smacked him, and then catches sight of the clock again. 7:47. He needs to get in the shower ASAP. 

A record twenty minutes later, he’s grabbing a CalorieMate block from the counter and stuffing his feet into his shoes as he shuffles toward the door. By chance, he looks back into the apartment as he’s hitting the lights, and there’s April, padding across the living room floor. Their eyes meet, and for once, April doesn’t run. Maybe he knows Itaru has to leave anyway — Itaru knows this, knows April must be used to Itaru’s routine by now, but some part of him lights up with the hope that April is finally getting used to him. The tip of April’s tail twitches, and Itaru realizes it’s gotten a little fluffier, no longer as thin as it was when Itaru first met him at the mall. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket, probably a full LP notif, but nonetheless a reminder that he’s dangerously close to being late to work. April’s eyes follow Itaru as he steps out of the apartment. Itaru has an odd urge to wave at him, or call out, “I’m off,” but he doesn’t, just shuts and locks the door. 

He wonders if April will still be there, chilling in the living room, when Itaru gets home from work. 

—

It’s a nice thought. When Itaru gets home that evening, though, utterly exhausted and deeply regretful of his life choices, April is hiding again, somewhere in the void of Itaru’s apartment. Or maybe he’s more visible than that, but Itaru doesn’t spare much time looking after the initial once-over, and instead makes a beeline for the couch and collapses onto it. He mushes his face into the cushions and lays there for an undetermined amount of time, hoping he’ll either fall asleep for a merciful few hours before stream time or magically regain energy through melding with the couch. In reality, he just lays there until his stomach starts growling, and then continues to lay there until it gets kind of unbearable. 

So he peels himself off the couch and zombie-walks into the kitchen, where he definitely has food he could make, but the prospect of actually doing that is exhausting. His eyes are drawn to April’s food and water bowls, which have been nearly emptied, and the events of the morning come back to him along with a phantom pain in his cheek. Even so Itaru can’t help but smile, thinking about April’s pushiness. Maybe his kitten is tsundere. Can cats do that? 

While he’s thinking about it, he transfers April’s dirty bowls to the dishwasher, and sets out new food and water, thinking it might attract his roommate’s attention. Sure enough, after a few minutes of Itaru opening and closing his cupboards with increasing apathy, April saunters in, his tail flicking as he pads over the threshold into the kitchen. He looks up at Itaru, twitches his little nose, and then settles down in front of his food bowl to eat. 

“I had a long day at work,” Itaru tells him. “You should be catlike and cuddle me, or something.”

Obviously April cannot understand him. April also doesn’t look up at the sound of Itaru’s voice, or react in any other way. Itaru thinks about his current successful kitten interaction streak, thinks about how much getting rejected would suck, thinks about the potential payoff of getting to pet April’s head, and then squats painfully down to April’s level, and stretches out one hand slowly, slowly, towards April. This gets April’s attention, and he tolerates Itaru’s hand approaching for about two seconds before turning and swishing out of the room.

That’s a clear no, but at least he didn’t bolt the second Itaru made a movement. Itaru thinks about an emote of a guy with big tear tracks down his cheeks making a fist of triumph, but he’s too tired and emotionally dead to actually reenact that IRL. 

He opens another cupboard, looks at the makings of a couple meals that would take a lot of HP, and then trudges back to the couch. He had a shitty day, so he can justify ordering takeout... Probably. 

Except the couch is occupied now, by April, who’s stretched out on the pillow Itaru’s face was mushed into a few minutes ago. Itaru blinks at him. How did he go, in the space of like twenty-four hours, from having a kitten that fled at the sight of him to a kitten that got into Itaru’s space and then looked up at him like Itaru was the one at fault? What had changed in April’s mind that made him suddenly fine with Itaru? Was it Itaru oversleeping for work? Did April think he was better than Itaru now, and therefore he could assert dominance? Should Itaru be offended? (Does he...care enough to be?)

As Itaru stares down at him, April stretches, languishing in his monopoly of Itaru’s spot on the couch, and opens his little mouth in a big yawn, shocking Itaru to his core. It’s a satisfying yawn that seems to relax April’s whole body, and as he’s completing it, he emits a tiny meow, the first real sound Itaru’s heard him make. 

Itaru thinks maybe he could muster up some tears for the tear-tracks-and-fist emote, now. He _really_ wants to pet April’s head, but he holds himself back, watching as April’s tail flicks a few more times, his eyes giving Itaru a cursory scan and then glancing around the rest of the room. Itaru sits down on the opposite edge of the couch, slowly, as if any movement will scare April away, but the dip of the cushions doesn’t seem to phase this new, bold April much. Nor does Itaru sliding his phone out of his pocket. Instead, April stretches himself out again, his spine arching perfectly, and then flops down on the cushion, curling into a loose ball. He rests his little chin on his too-big paws, gazing at Itaru with sleepy eyes. Itaru can’t resist lifting his phone and snapping a photo; April graciously allows this. 

With his phone in hand and his couch occupied, Itaru returns to the task of arranging dinner, and orders himself a pizza. He intends to do something else while waiting for it to arrive, like change into sweats or tie up his bangs or use the bathroom or _something_ , but instead he perches on the arm of his couch like some kind of gargoyle and watches April melt into the cushion opposite him, and then he gets a full LP notif from one of his mobage and gets distracted by playing an event, and then suddenly half an hour has passed and his phone is vibrating to let him know his pizza is outside. 

Picking up the pizza downstairs in his day job best rather than sweats feels unusually adultlike for Itaru’s tastes, but it’s not a _bad_ thing. When he brings the pizza back up to the apartment, though, he does change before eating it, lest he get grease stains on his dress shirt. April, who had disappeared when Itaru got up to get the pizza, reappears to sniff the pizza box, his blue eyes wide and curious. 

“I don’t think you can eat that,” Itaru tells him. When he opens the pizza box to reveal the glorious cheesy goodness inside, April sniffs it once and then withdraws, nose wrinkled, as if he’s above such plebeian delights as delivery pizza. When Itaru rattles some plates around in the cupboard to grab one for his pizza, April runs off, and Itaru doesn’t see him again. Not after he’s settled on the sofa (leaving plenty of cushion space for a small kitten, even), nor when he’s eaten half the pizza and has to lay down for half an hour, nor even when he drags himself to his desk to stream. And then Itaru spends the next handful of hours focused only on his game and the stream chat, and the world of his apartment and his little roommate recedes for a while. 

When he’s finished, and pads into the bathroom to brush his teeth and then throw himself at his bed, April finally reappears, as if he timed his litter box visit exactly to when Itaru was also in the bathroom. The bathroom is very small, but April manages not to brush against Itaru at all as he passes him on the way to his litter box, not even a flick of his tail against the backs of Itaru’s legs. Itaru watches with his toothbrush in his mouth as April settles into the litter, does his business, and then tosses some litter over the area, and then pads back out, tracking barely any litter with him — impressive. Much more dexterous than Itaru would probably be if he was a cat. 

He wishes April would come to bed and snuggle with him, or curl up on the other pillow. But the fact that April is willing to exist in the same room as Itaru is already leaps and bounds from where they started. And it’s not like April started out like a regular kitten either. Itaru is grateful for the progress he’s made — and it’s not like he can speedrun his kitten, obviously. (Right?)

When he’s tucked into bed, lights off and phone plugged into the charger, Itaru opens his camera roll and looks at the picture he took of April sitting on the couch cushion. Remarkably, the picture is crisp, not blurred at all by Itaru’s shaky hands or the speed with which he took the picture. April’s bored, sleepy gaze comes through clearly, as do his crossed paws and fluffy face. Itaru wishes he could reach into the photo and pet him, but instead he zooms in and out several times to focus on different parts of the photo, like the tufts of fur on April’s cheeks and the stunning blue of his eyes. Then he starts to feel like he’s going to cry from how much he loves his bratty little cat, so he switches to one of his mobage to dull the force of his emotions. 

God. He really wants to pet April, or cuddle him, or something. Anything. With time, he might be able to do that, but honestly, just existing in the same room as him is really good. He’s so attached already, and April barely even looks at him. Itaru really is one of those pathetic types. Not that this is news to him. 

Feeling his eyelids growing heavy, he switches back to his camera roll and sets the picture of April as his phone’s homescreen wallpaper. Then he shuts off his phone and curls up under his blankets, ready for sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> april the cat (nyapril) is based off a kitten i interacted with at my workplace, both in appearance and in personality. once i decided to use her as nyapril's faceclaim, i got a lot more affection for her, whereas before my feelings for her were mostly "get down from there, you little brat".


End file.
